My first full week of school, anchor charts, giveaway announcement, and just about a million FREEBIES!!!

Hi there bloggy friends,

This past week I had my first full week at my school. Every year I work really hard at establishing a strong relationship with each one of my students from day 1. I truly believe that if there is a relationship of trust and mutual respect the magic will happen! But how does it happen? How can one build this type of relationship with a 6 or 7 year old? The answer is positive. Yes you read that right. Positive,

When I was in grad school a couple of years ago, I read this book by Peter H. Johnston:

Click on picture to get from Amazon

                                            
In all my years of teaching I have never read a book so powerful about how my words affect my students’ attitudes, learning, and performance. To this day, this has been the most influential read for me in terms of my career.  The big message of this book has stayed with me and I use it with my boys at home too. Mr. Johnston released a new book on the importance of language in the classroom:

Click on the picture to get from Amazon

                                                 
It has been in my Amazon wish list for a while now!  My goal is to read it once I am done with the Governor’s Teacher Network…

Last week I didn’t get a chance to show you some of the fun  things we did during our first days of school.

We made Jitter Juice {with love sprinkles} to get rid of those first day jitters. Needless to say, we read the “First Day Jitters” and talked about how “everyone” is nervous during the first day of school. Did anyone say 3 ways to read a book with “The First Day Jitters”? Oh yes! Yes we did!! Being intentional with everything I do in our classroom is KEY! Come and grab the Jitter Juice headers for your jugs by clicking here!!

O.K. how adorably cute and amazing is this birthday rope?

I was looking for a way to use my wall space wisely and my wonderful sidekick, Mrs. Wilson, suggested that we should make a birthday rope. So I came home and simply printed some monthly pieces, brought them back to school, and Mrs. Wilson worked her magic. I keep on telling her that she can totally rule the world with a glue gun! Thank you Mrs. Wilson for your creativity and and for making our classroom look likea 2nd home to all of us!! If you loved this birthday rope, get it  by clicking here! {clip art by DigiWeb Studio and fonts by Hello Fonts}

I was also looking for a cute and meaningful way to display our learning targets. I thought I would hang them up in cute magnetic frames on my board. Well, guess what?! I went to the store and found the magnetic frames for $8.00 a piece!!! Wellthankyouverymuch! So I decided to come home and try a more affordable way to “frame” them. I came up with this idea, and I cannot be happier!

We have been building routines in every area. These are some of the anchor charts we have made together in Math.
 This first anchor chart is inspired by the Daily5. When we built this anchor chart on the teacher side, I  asked my firsties:

 “hmmm so what do you think the teachers should be doing during our BUILD stations time?”

 “I am so glad nobody suggested that we should be shushing kids! Neither Mrs. Wilson or Mrs. Graham went to shushing school, we went to ~teaching~ school. Therefore we should be teaching, NOT shushing!” 

 Remember… always positive, always intentional, engaging, directly to their hearts.

This one is such an important one!!! Oh boy, this one saves me a lot of trouble throughout the year. Each year I let my kiddos give me their suggestions for the “yes” and “no” sides… well this year my firsties blew it out of the ballpark. These suggestions for what you do  NOT do when you are finished are awesome! Especially when somebody mentioned, that if you look at the ceiling you can become a better ceiling looker and not better at Math. Hahahahahahahaha!!! Seriously, this year is going to be one with tons of stories for the retirement book.

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Also don’t forget that TpT is throwing their back to school sale this Monday and Tuesday!

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EVEN BETTER!!!! My bloggy friends and I are SO thrilled to announce our “Diggin’ Series” giveaway!!!